BWA manager not yet back to work

Three days after the state-owned Barbados Water Authority (BWA) agreed to reinstate Human Resources and Development Director Jacqueline Belgrave, the senior staffer is still not back on the job.

Reliable sources told Barbados TODAY that up to today, Belgrave had not put in an appearance at the BWA’s Pine, St Michael headquarters.

After being on the job for less than a year, Belgrave was suddenly fired by the board last Friday for undisclosed reasons.

But following a near ten-hour meeting on Sunday between Minister of Water Resources Wilfred Abrahams, the BWA board and the Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU), the Minister blamed the board for seeking to run the company’s day-to-day affairs.

However, he said the board had recommitted to following the correct procedures and protocols, allowing the BWA management to manage.  Abrahams also said that the healing had begun.

On Monday morning General Secretary of the BWU Senator Toni Moore met with unionised workers at the company to discuss the outcome of her talks with the board and Minister.

Senator Moore was satisfied that the board had committed to making a fresh start in the right direction and said she was willing to give it a chance to work.

But at the same meeting, staffers told the union boss they wanted the chairman Leodeane Worrell to go, a position not supported by the BWU.

Senator Moore said that the dismissal of the HR director was a culmination of months of fractured relations with workers and the union, brought on by the “intrusion” of the board in the employment relations at the BWA.